Over the weekend, we went to a dinner at the home of friends of ours (Paul of this site and wife, if you must know). A friend of theirs was up from Bloomington Indiana, and had put together as one of the courses for the meal a balsamic glazed sandwich with brie. It was lovely, but I knew it wanted one more ingredient - carmelized onions. In the back of my head, a dish was forming.

The next day I turn on Sarah Moulton's show and she's making balsamic glazed salmon. Then we get our latest issue of Cooking Light and there's a balsamic glazed recipe in there as well. OK, OK, I can take a hint - it's balsamic glazed time.

I'm a firm believer in keeping a box of prepared puff pastry (and a box of prepared phyllo dough) in your freezer at all times. It's easy to make an impressive looking dish without much effort when puff pastry is involved.

This main course takes about 15-20 minutes of actual working time and about an hour from start to finish, including defrost time.

I served this with a puff pastry dessert that I'll post tomorrow. It's not diet food by ANY stretch of the imagination, but you gotta live it up sometime, right?

In a saucepan, over medium heat, dissolve brown sugar in balsamic vinegar. Stir well. Add lemon juice and pinch of salt. Let sit on medium heat and reduce until glaze covers the back of a spoon thickly.

While waiting for glaze to reduce, peel onions and slice thinly with a mandolin if you have one.

Melt butter and heat oil together in a large skillet. Add onions, pinch of cumin, pinch of thyme and sautee over medium heat until onions go translucents, then lightly brown. Do not burn. This may take 10 minutes or so.

Once onions are ready and sauce has reduced, pour the balsamic glaze into the onions and stir well to coat. Turn heat up.

With tongs, spread coated onions over sheet of puff pastry. Leave a 1-2" border all around the edges. As you pick up the onions with the tongs, let a bit of the glaze drip off back into the pan.

When you've moved all the onions, fold up the edges of the pastry to form a barrier/outer crust to the gallette. Pinch corners together so they hold as the galette bakes.

Let the little remaining glaze reduce further for five minutes. Meanwhile, arrange the brie slices as you like on top of the onion mix.

After five minutes, pour or drizzle the remaining glaze over the top of the gallette, covering the cheese.

Put the galette in the 400 F oven for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Remove from oven, remove from cookie sheet, and let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

You should get four big slices out of this recipe, or eight side dish sized slices.

UPDATE: Meg points out that this is an awful lot like this recipe from the early days of Too Many Chefs. Aside from the balsamic glaze, there are differences - this recipe calls for the onions to be thinly sliced, that one calls for thick slices; this recipe uses a square of puff, that one uses triangles. I really did just make this one up last night, but I guess it shows you how some ideas are just so good, they're obvious!